


tangerine trees, marmalade skies

by ebenroot



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Music Store, Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, Arranged Marriage, M/M, Mutual Pining, Time Skips, Witches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-13
Updated: 2018-11-13
Packaged: 2019-08-23 07:31:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16614602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ebenroot/pseuds/ebenroot
Summary: It’s not that Yuri thinks Victor is a big fat liar. It just, well, Yuri thinks Victor is a big fucking liar.“The Sun,” Yuri repeats for the fifth time that day. “You’re engaged tothe Sun.”--a (slightly confusing and annoyingly sappy) account of Victor Nikiforov's engagement to the Sun, as narrated by #1 employee Yuri Plisetsky





	tangerine trees, marmalade skies

**Author's Note:**

> though the title of this is taken from The Beatles "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds", the idea was partially inspired by the music video for LSD's Thunderclouds
> 
> not beta'd

It’s not that Yuri thinks Victor is a big fat liar. It just, well, Yuri thinks Victor is a _big fucking liar_.

“The Sun,” Yuri repeats for the fifth time that day. “You’re engaged to the _Sun_.”

Victor nods his head, steadying himself on the ladder to place another bluegrass record on its respective shelf. The plastic case of records that floats within arms’ reach wobbles as Victor reaches inside for another. Yuri kicks a pillow underneath it, just in case. “That doesn’t make any sense. Your magic isn’t even elemental. Why would the _Sun_ be interested in you? Doesn’t he date like, cloud nymphs or something?”

“Cloud nymphs are douchebags. I thought we both agreed on that.”

“No, _you_ said cloud nymphs are douchebags because your ex dumped you for one,” Yuri corrects. Not like that’s a problem or anything; Yuri fucking hated Victor’s ex. Always walked into the music shop like he owned shit and thought he could boss Yuri around just because Victor let him suck his dick one (1) time. Good riddance.

Victor’s got a face on, that dumb pouty one where his lower lip juts out and his nose scrunches up. Victor’s nose is big, so it’s not pretty when he scrunches it up like that. Yuri tells him to stop being gross as he grabs the Windex and starts wiping down the display cabinet.

  
  
  


 

 

Yuri’s never met the Sun before. Not personally at least.

He sees him in the sky all the time when he’s riding his bike to school or walking to his job at the record store: an outline of a man sitting on the clouds, surrounded by a blinding light. JJ told Yuri once during a study session on transmogrification that the reason why people say not to stare at the Sun for too long or else you’ll go blind is because the Sun is so beautiful that it _hurts_ to look at him. But that doesn’t make sense because a) why would Victor marry the Sun if he couldn’t even look at him? and b) JJ still has use of his eyes after seeing the Sun. Idiot.

Yuri knows the Sun likes to stay out a little bit longer whenever Victor is composing something for a customer. He hides behind the clouds like it’s no big deal that it’s eight o’clock and the skies are still orangey-purple, because he just wants to listen to Victor play, and Yuri wants to go to sleep cause he’s got  _school_ _tomorrow, you jerk._

“How’d you two even meet?” Yuri asks Victor on a day it’s cloudy and they are walking home from the music shop. There's no new orders, just pick ups, which means the Sun leaves the sky at the appropriate time so the Moon can take place. Victor never likes talking about the Sun while outside, in the off-chance the Sun hears them talking. Apparently, the Sun is a very nervous being. Victor thinks it’s the cutest thing ever.

“My mom knows the Star Makers and heard he was on the market,” Victor says, shrugging. He steps around the cracks in the sidewalk with his hands shoved in the pockets of his jacket, keeping his eyes on the sky. “So, for whatever reason, she thought I would be a perfect match and just…wrangled him out of the sky and brought him home to meet me when I came over for dinner.”

That’s plausible. Victor’s mom is scary like that. She could probably make a demon and an angel sit down for a cup of tea and cookies if she wanted to.

“So he just agreed? He’s cool marrying a witch that owns a record shop and can’t go to bed without his poodle?” Yuri questions.

“He actually hasn’t met Makka,” Victor answers, not missing a beat. “Plus, we haven’t set a date yet, so he can call it off if he changes his mind.” Victor sounds sad at that point, and it’s weird hearing that in his voice. It’s not like Victor’s had much time to talk to the Sun, what with him being on the ground and the Sun being…the Sun, which constitutes to _not_ being on the ground. So why would he even be sad???

“You gave him a ring yet?” Yuri asks for a distraction. It works; Victor brightens with a stupid heart-shaped grin.

“No, not yet! Tomorrow’s going to be a rainy day, so I’m hoping I can visit him since he won’t be as busy,” he enthuses, then _skips_ over the cracks in the sidewalk. “It’s so pretty, Yura. It has an engraving that says ‘ _I hope that our love burns as bright as you do_ ’ along the sides and a little ruby heart surrounded by a swirling flame.” 

Yuri hums, not really listening. He’s instead wondering how it must feel for the Sun to have everything compared to himself. How would you even declare anything to him? You can’t say your love burns hotter than the Sun, because he _is_ the fucking Sun. That must suck.

But Victor continues to blab on about this thing about the Sun he found cute, and this _other_ thing about the Sun that was _really_ cute, and this _other-other_ thing about the Sun that was _really-really_ cute as he walks Yuri home. He doesn’t stop until Yuri has to tell him to go the fuck away, before he slams the door in his face and turns the porch light off.

Victor walks down Yuri’s pathway like he’s floating on air, and Yuri watches him go through the curtains of his living room window, Potya rubbing herself against his sock-clad ankles. There’s a light shining over Victor’s shoulders that’s too bright for a street lamp, and it’s only when Victor goes left that Yuri sees a Star Maker following the witch overhead on a cumulus puff, a star safely encompassed and compressed inside a casing of magic that dangles above Victor’s oblivious head.

Yuri closes the curtain shut with a huff. Idiot.

  
  


 

 

 

They have a rainy spell for three days. Victor is gone two out of those three days, which means that Yuri is his own boss and he can blast all of the death metal and alternative rock he wants. The music makes the walls turn red, the carpet black, and the plants vomit. It’s awesome. 

On the fourth day Yuri comes to work - and the pavement outside is still wet and the air still smells like an overflowing sewer - the walls of the shop are now blue, the carpet groans with every step Yuri takes, and the plants are crying. It is considerably less awesome.

Victor is half flung over the glass counter, his coat and silver hair soggy with rainwater. Yuri can’t even approach him because holy _fuck_ , he stinks like tears and wet garbage.

“What the _fuck_ is going on?” he asks, holding his nose.

Victor doesn’t lift his head, but he does say, “Oh, hey Yura. Could you flip the record to side B for me?”

The gramophone against the wall is tinted blue, the same way it does whenever it plays some emo shit, and not even the _good_ kind of emo shit. Yuri inspects the record that is still spinning on its turntable, reading off the songs.

“Did - did he break off the engagement or something? Why are you listening to ‘ _Lately I Haven’t Been Sleeping_ ’?” Yuri asks. He goes over to the wastebasket and tosses the record inside. It turns blue and starts sobbing balled up order receipts.

“No,” Victor says into the glass.

“Then what is it?” Yuri doesn’t usually put this much effort into actually caring about Victor’s well-being, so he better fucking get some answers.

Victor finally, _finally_ lifts his head up. He has bags under his eyes and his big nose is all red and snotty and scrunchy and _gross._  

“The ring,” he says, lower lip trembling. “It - it melted off.”

 

…

 

“What.” 

Victor wipes at his eyes, sighing against the ridge of his knuckles. “I got on one knee, slipped the ring on his finger and it just-“ Victor blows a raspberry. Yuri guesses that must be what a ring melting off the finger of the physical embodiment of the Sun sounds like.

“…That’s…that’s it?” Yuri wasted his compassion on _this shit?_

Victor nods sadly. “I mean, he said it was alright. It happens a lot, I guess? And that’s why he doesn’t wear jewelry unless it’s crafted with this special metal that I can’t get a hold of with my magic.”

“…But that’s it?”

Victor nods again.

Yuri takes one of the paper balls the wastebasket chokes out through its sobbing and throws it at Victor’s head.

  
  
  


 

 

The Sun and Victor don’t have a wedding date set. The Moon and the Star Makers are making arrangements on behalf of the Sun, creating a dialogue with Victor’s mother who makes arrangements on behalf of Victor. Which means that the Sun and Victor are left on the sidelines, twiddling their thumbs and apparently -- at least from what Yuri can surmise out of Victor's annoying bitch fits he has every day -- longing to see the other again.

“Are you guys doing _anything?_ I mean, _you’re_ the ones that are going to be stuck together for the rest of eternity,” Yuri asks. It’s another slow day. He’s sold a record to a mother in need of lullabies for her crying newborn and a cassette tape for a college student that was in need of something to listen to that enhanced focus.

Yuri wishes sometimes that Victor’s magic worked on him the same way that it worked on the customers, that it would take the tension off of his bones when he listened to something relaxing, make him laugh with joy or sob until he vomited, but feel better right afterwards. He’s gotten used to it, he guesses. But he’s never been good at understanding how Victor’s magic worked anyways.

Victor looks up from his melodica, currently in the middle of composing a song that helps with hangovers. Behind him, the window is extremely bright outside from the Sun failing at inconspicuously taking a peek from where he is positioned high in the sky. 

“Well, we get to pick out the table decorations. Maybe catering,” he says around the mouth tube.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Sun doesn’t have any preferences for location or time. He doesn’t know what color he wants the table cloths or the napkins to be. He doesn’t know how many guests he wants or where he wants to go for the honeymoon. He doesn’t even know what kind of cake he would want at the wedding. That’s another thing Yuri finds out about the Sun through Victor’s sighing and pathetic groaning: he is frustratingly indecisive.

But, at least Victor gets over his fuck up with the ring, and the walls of the record shop go back to its vibrant colors of red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple.

Mila from the café next door said walking into the record store whenever Victor was in a good mood and had a ‘good vibrations’ record on was like walking into a fever dream while also on four different types of acid. Victor considers that the highest of compliments.

“You ever met the Sun before?” Yuri asks Otabek on his off day, spending it hanging out at the Nimbus Tea Shop. Otabek makes thunderclouds, and also the best tea and coffee this side of the city hands down. He technically falls under the same category as a cloud nymph, but he’s not a douchebag. Definitely not. 

“Yeah. Once or twice,” he mumbles, steeping a cup of constant comment. “Sometimes he comes in here for tea.”

It’s always smells like tea and rain inside the shop, kinda wet and marshy-like. But it’s okay; Yuri likes the stench, and he likes watching the clouds float around from table to table with trays of tea. 

“Does it hurt to look at him?” Yuri asks.

Otabek looks at Yuri like he’s an idiot. “No? I mean, he’s…he’s definitely pretty. But it’s not like it _hurts_.”

“Mmm.” Yuri sips at his cup of ginger tea with two scoops of honey and a salted lemon wedge. “He’s marrying my boss.”

“Oh. Tell Victor congratulations." 

“He’s being really gross about it. He got all mopey and shit when he couldn’t put a ring on his finger. And the Star Makers and Victor’s mom are the ones that are arranging the marriage, so it’s not like they’re even _together-_ together, you know? He gets mopey about that too.”

Otabek wipes his hand on his chest, yellow sparks emitting from his fingertips as he causes some static. “The Sun doesn’t come around a lot,” Otabek explains. “He probably wants to get to know him more. He does emotions, right? He’s not specialized in elements like you are?”

Yuri doesn’t consider himself a ‘specialist’. JJ specializes in Earth magic by singing to plants and creating potions from their seeds and pollen, like the total nerd that he is. Mila specializes in cooking magic; she exploits people by making them famished just from smelling whatever it is she’s cooking up inside her café.

He, on the other hand, makes the wind blow. He can control it with his fingers, manipulate it with the twists of his wrists. He rides its currents upupup until he’s soaring into the clouds where the nymphs bounce through the air bringing rain showers and thunder and lightning. But that’s just about it.

“He must miss him,” Otabek quietly surmises.

“You can’t miss someone you barely know,” Yuri counters, and sips at his tea.

  


 

 

 

“I want to get him something else,” Victor bemoans one Tuesday as he carefully folds a record inside of a wax paper sleeve. “Something that says, ‘I can’t wait to spend the rest of our lives together’ and _won’t_ go _pfft_ when he touches it.”

Yuri isn’t really listening to Victor at the moment; Professor Chadwick decided to be a dickhead and add an extra chapter of material to be included on the midterm even though they _barely_ spent any time going over it in lecture.

(“It’s not that much if you just read the book,” JJ piped up in the midst of Yuri’s bitch fit to Isabella and the others. But fuck JJ, what does he know anyways?)

Victor spends a whole five minutes just _sighing_ and _humming_ and tutting his teeth as he mumbles ideas to himself before deciding against it. And Yuri can’t _focus_ on air currents and ion charges for electrics involved with cloud magic formation with Victor being so fucking _noisy_.

“Just make him a song or something!” Yuri is forced to snap when he’s read a paragraph three times over and can’t go on any longer. “I mean--” he throws a vague hand gesture towards the records all around them, “that _is_ your job.”

Victor blinks at Yuri. Then, he _glows_. 

“ _Yes!_ That’s brilliant!” he exclaims. “See Yura, this is why I pay you what I pay you.” 

“You pay me what you pay me because it’s the _law_ ,” Yuri vehemently spits. Though, Yuri admits that Victor lets him get away with a lot more crap than the standard minimum wage job would. He shudders at the horror stories Leo speaks of working at the cinema scraping unicorn gum and popcorn off the floor.

But unfortunately, Victor doesn’t stop being annoying at that. He wanders to the backroom, loudly bumbling about and commanding instruments towards the front. _Badly_ commanding. Victor might as well have been waving his hands around like a windmill by how the instruments fling themselves through the air, halting themselves before they hurdle into the windows.

The timpani rolls itself out and nearly run into the display case. A violin, viola and a cello sit themselves in front of the R&B shelf and immediately start tuning themselves, which??? Can they _not???_

“Hmm, but what kind of music does he like? Something slow? Something fast? Would he like synths?” Victor hums with fingers against his bottom lip, then with his other hand, gives a harsh snap of his fingers. A notepad zips into his hand; the pencil overshoots however and nearly stabs Victor in the wrist. “Should I write lyrics?" 

“I know you’re not talking to me, but can you keep your thinking down?” Yuri says. He’s managed to turn the page at least, but the text on the page is still not being read.

“Yura, I need you for sound dampening--”

“I’m not even _good_ at reverbs.” That’s a lie, he passed ‘Sound and Space’ last quarter. He played with the effects of winds and how they bend sound in tightly enclosed spaces, studied them to the most meticulous detail until he could make a symphony of varying sounds just by adjusting the size and shape of a PVC pipe and the strength of the wind he blew through it.

But he _really_ can’t be bothered to fuck with Victor and a stupid love song right now!!

“Just one song. We don’t have customers anyways and I don’t have a new shipment of new records to stock.” Yuri doesn’t have to be looking at Victor to know that he’s doing the Thing. The Thing that pisses Yuri off the most about his boss, that stupid puppy dog pout as he looks up through his eyelashes like he’s his poodle instead of a twenty-seven year old man. Momentarily, Yuri wonders if Victor ever pulled that shit with the Sun. He feels a small sense of pity for him if Victor’s yet to.

“... _One_ song,” Yuri stresses, dog-earing the page for later. “ _One song_.”

Victor nods, pencil and pad at the ready.

  


 

 

 

 

They make twelve songs. By the end of it, Yuri has to literally kick a trombone out of his way so he can escape the shop and head home because ‘ _my shift is over and I didn’t even get a chance to study and_ **_I’m_ ** _not the one marrying the fucking Sun so_ **_why_ ** _am I even doing this?!_ ’. His hair stands on all ends as he trudges home, surly and -- pardon the pun -- winded.

The Sun continues to linger in the sky, shining gentle rays over Victor’s shop in the distance.

  
  
  


 

“How do you become infatuated with someone your parents are forcing you to marry?” Yuri questions with a grumble. Behind the counter, Otabek raises an eyebrow.

“Is there something you want to tell me?”

“Not _me_. I’m talking about Victor and the Sun,” Yuri scoffs. Across the table, JJ takes a free scone from the tray a stratus cloud floats around the shop with.

“Dude, I thought we were going to talk about the test--”

“You know I failed it. Why’d you even follow me here? So you can rub it in and say how _awesome_ and _smart_ you are that you didn’t have some annoying ass boss forcing you to make the right atmosphere for _twelve_ love song?”

JJ blinks. Then, he takes a bite out of his scone.

“No?”

Yuri huffs, hand against his cheek and snarl on his lips, 

“Isn’t it a good thing that they’re infatuated with each other?” Otabek asks. “Like, wouldn’t it be worse if they _didn’t_ want to be together? As far as arranged marriages go, this is actually pretty good.”

“It doesn’t make _sense_ ,” Yuri emphasizes, crossing arms against his chest. “Plus, if the Sun is as infatuated with Victor as Victor is with him, why doesn’t he come around more often? Like, what’s he hiding?" 

Otabek blinks. “He’s the _Sun_. He can’t be here _all_ the time.”

Yuri sniffs. “He could spare an hour at least.”

Another stratus cloud floats by with free samples of biscotti. JJ takes one of those too.

“Do you ever wonder how do they kiss?” JJ asks aloud just before he takes a bite into the pastry.

Yuri loudly retches as his answer.

  
  


 

 

(Maybe, secretly, Yuri does wonders how does Victor love the Sun so much. Maybe he does wonder if Victor holds hands with the Sun, if it is even _possible_ to kiss the Sun when everything he touches becomes scorched with his heat and everyone that sees him is blinded by his light.

And maybe, just a little, Yuri wonders if this marriage thing is going to work between them. Not that he cares about Victor or anything dumb like that; he just cares about a consistent paycheck, which he most likely wouldn’t be getting if Victor is a mopey, overdramatic mess that can’t hold a pen to sign off on his poodle print check notes. 

He (sort of) wonders about this as Victor ties the box of records to a set of mylar weather balloons, enclosing the box with a letter that asks for a Star Maker or a nymph to read it to the Sun so it will not burst into flames upon him touching it.

“Do you think he’ll like them?” Victor asks Yuri as they watch the balloons float up up up past the clouds. “Do you think he’ll know that I’m always thinking about him? That I’m counting down the days?" 

 _How do you love him so much? It’s so_ **_weird_** _,_  Yuri thinks.

“I don’t know,” he answers. “But people pay you to do this, so you can’t be all that bad.”)

  


 

 

 

They don’t get a response for three days. They get more orders from customers though, more shipments to go through and more time that Yuri spends placing the records on the right shelf while Victor is in the backroom strumming a guitar or playing a triangle for some new composition.

But on the fourth day, they do get a response. They get a response in the form of the Sun descending down from the clouds one afternoon, bringing with him a halo of bright, blinding light that nearly burns Yuri’s eyeballs from their sockets. 

It happens unexpectedly and it happens _very_ quickly. One moment Yuri was wiping down the counter with an old rag, and the next, the room is just _engulfed_ in light. Light and _heat_. He doesn’t know if he heard the tinkle of the door’s bell over his initial scream of ‘ _what the fUCK!’_ , but he does hear from in the back, Victor crashing into something.

“Oh,” a voice -- timid and small, yet soft and gentle -- responds. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.”

The brightness dims, but it’s not by a considerable amount. The walls still look as though they were bleached of their color, and it is still _hot_. Unreasonably hot. They’re in the middle of March for fucks sake.

But when Yuri _does_ manage to regain a semblance of his vision, he is left in a brief moment of awe.

Wow. The Sun actually _is_ beautiful.

The blinding light currently sits at the crown of his head, wearing it like a halo. His robes are orange and yellow and _long_ , trailing to the door. His eyes are bright and warm, his skin is pinked with a shy blush that -- annoyingly -- is just how Victor described it would look like: _cute_ . And held in his grasp being offered towards Yuri is...something charred and black. And smelling _foul_.

“I-Is -- um -- is my fiancé here?” the Sun asks, and he somehow blushes _harder_ at saying the ‘f’ word. From the back, Victor crashes into something else.

“Yeah, he’s here,” Yuri dryly answers, still eying that burnt heap of sludge in the Sun’s grasp. It’s...actually still on fire, if the small wisps of smoke constantly sizzling up and out from the mound are anything to go by. Part of him wants to question just what the hell is the Sun doing here with _that_ in his hands, but another part of him can’t seem find his tongue in his mouth, nor find the ability to pull his eyes away from the glow of the Sun’s face as he _smiles_.

Yuri doesn’t know when Victor emerges from the backroom, but the obnoxious gasp of surprise startles him enough to jump onto the tips of his toes.

“You’re here! In my shop!!” Victor shouts, and he’s grinning like a madman. 

The Sun blushes more. Victor’s smile looks ready to rip off his face and fly into orbit from sheer elation.

“Um, yes. I’m here,” the Sun answers, stepping towards the counter. The mound of burning whatever is shaking in the Sun’s grasp, and for a split second, Yuri fears the thing might be _alive._ But when the Sun sets it down on the countertop with a loud _clunk!_ , Yuri sees it was only the Sun’s nervous hands that made it jitter. 

“This is for you,” he says, twining his fingers in the sleeves of his robes. He bites at his bottom lip, averting his eyes. “Um...I know it doesn’t necessarily _look_ like a pie, but it is a pie...cremeberry pie.” 

“I love cremeberry pie,” Victor sighs. Yuri thinks he’s going to vomit, both from the smell of the burnt remains of a (probably delicious) cremeberry pie, and from how Victor is looking at the Sun with stupid, lovesick eyes.

The Sun nods. “I loved the songs you made for me, so I wanted to make something for you to enjoy as well,” he murmurs. Victor does the lovesick sigh _again_.

“Oh! Let me show you around! You’ve never - there’s _so_ many things I’ve just gotten in!” Victor chirps. Yuri clicks his tongue discreetly; they’ve gotten more shit to sift through and more cardboard boxes to throw away. Nothing that warrants Victor bouncing up and down on the tips of his toes like an excitable pup greeting its master as he rounds the corner to stand at the Sun’s side.  

“I really shouldn’t stay for long, Vitya,” the Sun gently chides, and ???? They have _pet names_ for each other???

Victor wraps an arm around the Sun’s narrow shoulders, his hand finding its home in the wrinkles of the Sun’s golden orange robes. “It will be quick! Really quick!” the witch reassures. Yuri notes the Sun doesn’t put up any sort of resistance as Victor gently leads him around the countertop. He also notes that the Sun leaves singed footprints in Victor’s ugly shag carpet as he walks, only for them to disappear once the long train of his robes drag over them.

And also, the Sun is _really_ pretty when standing only a mere few inches away from him. 

“This is my employee, Yuri Plisetsky. He helped with the songs!” Victor enthusiastically introduces to his bright and beautiful fiancé. The Sun nods, and offers his hand forward. There’s a heavenly glow beneath his skin, burning from the inside out. Yuri’s half afraid to touch him, but he also doesn’t want to look like an asshole by _not_ shaking his hand so…

Yuri grasps it, eyes averting, waiting for the sting of fire. “Nice to meet you,” he mumbles under his breath. 

The sting doesn’t come. Just a normal handshake, albeit very warm and the Sun’s skin _very_ soft against Yuri’s palm.

“Likewise,” the Sun answers with a smile that makes Yuri’s cheeks and the tips of his ears grow as warm as his hand.

Victor and the Sun disappear in the back, and Yuri can hear Victor cheerfully -- and loudly -- showing off all of the instruments he has stored in the back. And though it is very subtle, he hears the Sun cooing and ‘ah’ing at every little thing. The skies outside take a moment to dim from the lack of sunlight; it purples and pinks like an early sunset the longer the Sun continues to be led about through the shop by Victor’s arm, though neither of them seem to mind the impending darkness, too lost in their own little world.

They wander up and down the aisles of records and cassette tapes, and Victor points out each and every one of his favorite artists and album covers by genre of music, even letting the Sun listen to a few tracks as if Victor’s words do not land a big enough impact to convey how _amazing_ these songs are. Yuri just watches them flitter forward and back, from the front of the store towards the back and to the front again.

He watches Victor laugh and joke and the Sun smile and giggle and hold tighter to Victor’s arm. There’s singe marks in Victor’s sleeve -- Yuri sees them when the Sun shifts his hold to allow Victor to grab another record of the shelf instead of just, you know, _letting go of the arm_. But Victor doesn’t look like he minds. They both sit down in the waiting chairs for customers, curled closely together, and listen to the gramophone seep with music that comes straight from Victor’s heart.

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Star Maker comes knocking at the front of the store’s door in the middle of Victor’s impromptu guitar lesson, approximately two hours after the Sun said he ‘couldn’t stay for long’. The Sun had pointed at one of the guitar’s on Victor’s wall in admiration of its finish during their third walk-around the store together, and Victor immediately had Yuri not only get it down from the wall, but also go fetch heavy fire lacquer to rub into the guitar’s neck, so it is _slightly_ resistant to the burn of the Sun’s gentle touch.

“There you are!” the Star Maker shouts, and it’s almost jarring for Yuri to see how _pitch black_ it is outside. Across the street, he sees Mila’s playing with the lights in the inside of her shop, and also fiddling with the clock on her wall. He gives a glance to the clock over their register and ah. It’s only two o’clock.

The Sun -- who is at the moment comfortably situated in Victor’s arms -- jumps in surprise. “M-Minako!” he says with a nervous gasp, then directs his attention to the clock and nearly topples over the stool in surprise. “I-I’m sorry! I thought I was only out for a short while-”

“It’s _only two!_ And now it’s pitch black outside!” the Star Maker -- Minako apparently -- scolds. She looks more higher ranked than the typical Star Makers Yuri sometimes sees floating around through the skies above during nightfall; her robes are longer and embedded with hundreds of diamonds, and embedded in her chest and encased in crystalized magic, the energy of a star shines bright enough to blind. “Nevermind the apologies, we _must_ be going now.” 

Victor looks like he doesn’t want to let the Sun go. Frankly, the Sun looks just as reluctant to move from the place in Victor’s arms. And Yuri -- Yuri _doesn’t_ get why that sad look on their faces pisses him off so much. Why the way Victor’s hand tightens in the material of the Sun’s robes as he rises off Victor’s lap to set the guitar aside annoys Yuri _so fucking much_ , or how the Sun seems to look a little dimmer now, more human now rather than celestial like all those hailing from the cosmos normally look.

It pisses Yuri off. 

 _They’re_ pissing Yuri off.

_How do you love each other so much under so little time and so far a distance? It doesn’t make sense. No sense at all._

“You can’t just give them five minutes to say goodbye?” Yuri grumbles, arms defensively crossed over his chest. The Sun pauses briefly in his sulk back over to the Star Maker, and the Star Maker raises a finely lined eyebrow at Yuri.

“We can’t keep the world in darkness for much longer, Kid--”

“Just _five minutes_. He’s going to be annoying if he doesn’t get a proper goodbye and I don’t want to deal with it,” Yuri drawls with a head tilt towards Victor. It’s the truth. A partial truth, but the truth nonetheless.

The Star Maker hums and taps her foot. Sparks of light emit from the bottom of her glass heels as she studies the furrow of Yuri’s eyebrows and the pout of his lips. “...Alright,” she says after the longest silence, “five minutes. But we go _straight_ home, understand?” she then tells directly to the Sun, who hurriedly nods his head. The Star Maker sighs and mutters something under her breath that is more exhausted than unkind, before shuffling out the front door to wait in the darkness.

“I didn’t mean to cause you trouble,” Victor starts, but the Sun silences him with a gentle hand to his cheek. 

“You weren’t,” he says, voice barely a whisper. “I always enjoy being with you, even if only for a short while.”

Victor responds to that with a kiss to the inner part of the Sun’s wrist. Yuri holds in his gag. 

In actuality, they say goodbye relatively quick. It’s just that after they say goodbyes and murmur their wishes to see each other soon, they just...stay in each others’ arms. The gramophone is playing sappy love ballads and Victor starts swaying them both to the beat in a farewell dance. Yuri bites his tongue to keep from spitting anything out, and starts busying himself with trying to clean the countertop area around the pie where bits of charred ash have fallen off the crust.

He only stops when he hears the Sun gently call his name to attention, and regretfully turns to properly meet the Sun’s eyes looking at him, a shade of gold and brown and starlight combined.

“Thank you for taking care of my Vitya while we were apart,” the Sun says, and it makes Yuri mad how sincere and how _grateful_ he sounds. “I won’t be able to see him as often as I like, not until we are married, so...thank you for being a friend to him.”

Yuri’s cleaning of the counter becomes aggressive. “Whatever, it’s nothing. I didn’t do anything. He just became a whiny shit that can’t function ever since you guys got engaged, so the quicker you get married, the better. Though he’s a moron, so I’m not sure why you even _want_ to get married to him but, whatever,” the blond says all in one breath.

The Sun blinks, before his smile grows softer and the light glows in his cheeks.

“He’s mine and I’m his. That’s all that matters to me.”

Wow. Okay. The Sun is not only unfairly beautiful, but also just as fucking annoying as Victor with that romantic shit. Maybe things _will_ work out for them after all.

The Star Maker gives three sharp knocks at the glass of the window, and the Sun hitches his robes up. “Coming!” he shouts over his shoulder, then looks over to his fiancé. “Until our wedding, Vitya,” he promises, bringing a hand to his mouth to blow a kiss and okay, Yuri _can’t help_ but making a gag at that.

Victor snatches the kiss out of the air, makes a show of holding it to his heart. “I’ll be counting the days, solnyshko,” he says with all the yearning and longing and whining Yuri’s been putting up with for the last three months. The Sun looks like he wants to run back into Victor’s arms just from the pout on Victor’s lips -- so Yuri _is_ the only one  that thinks that face is annoying. But, the Sun resists the urge, and hurriedly runs to the door, shouting “Don’t forget to eat your pie!” as he disappears into the darkness. 

Then, there is quiet, before the skies take on shades of pink, orange, yellow till at last it is there. Sunlight renewed.

  


 

 

 

“You’re not actually going to _eat_ that, are you?” Yuri asks when Victor digs up some plastic forks. _Two_ plastic forks. Yuri refuses to even look at the utensil.

“He made it for me! Of course I’m going to eat it!” Victor exclaims, before poking around for a soft spot in the pie to start with. He eventually comes up with a chunk of burnt sludge dripping off the ends of his melting fork, smelling like smoke and soot. Yuri gets his cell phone ready to dial emergency. 

Victor chirps ‘Bon appétit!’ before taking not a nibble or a bite, but engulfing the _entire forkful_ of burnt pie.

He chews. He chews. He chews-

Victor’s eyes bulge wide open, and he brings his hand to his mouth to spit.

“Gross! Get a napkin at least! You touch things!” Yuri accuses Victor, throwing a rag at his boss before Victor can spit the food back into the palm of his hand.

“There’s something in here,” Victor manages to say, voice garbled around spit and pie.

“Yeah, ashes and charcoal bricks,” Yuri says with a roll of his eyes. Victor spits out the piece of pie into the rag, then picks through the chewed up wad of pie with his fingers. Yuri wrinkles his nose at him. Absolutely disgusting.

“I’m going to go somewhere else where I _don’t_ have to see that,” Yuri says with a blind gesture in Victor’s direction, stomping to the back to get a crate of records or something. He reaches for the pie to throw it out -- not that the Sun isn’t a nice person for bringing his fiancé pie, but it’s no excuse for baking a shitty pie that smells like death and is stinking up the lobby with its charred scent -- and the moment his hand grazes against the melted pie tin, Victor makes a shriek. 

Yuri jumps back, hand reeled to his side. “W-What?! What is it?!”

Victor has a hand to his mouth, and offers his other hand with the pie glob towards Yuri. There, seated in Victor’s palm amid the nasty chewed pieces Victor picked through, is a golden ring.

“It’s so beautiful!” Victor says behind his fingers, carefully picking the ring out of his palm before Yuri can even get a good look at it. “Oh my god, it’s so gorgeous. Look! Look it fits perfectly! Oh my god, it’s sparkling so much! It looks like it was crafted with starlight! And it’s so warm! It’s so beautiful! Oh my _goooooodddd_."

Victor holds the hand that wears the ring to his heart, smile stretching out on his face. “...I’m going to be married...” he says with the most breathless of sighs, before taking up his melted fork and pushing around the burnt pieces in the pie pan with a lovesick grin.

Once again, Yuri wrinkles his nose at him. Disgusting.

  
  


 

 

 

 

“I met the Sun,” Yuri tells Otabek. Otabek hums, arranging a tray of chai teas on the back of a cumulus puff.

“And?”

“He’s pretty. And annoying. They both are _really_ annoying.”

Otabek smiles. “I think they call it ‘being in love’, but whatever you say.”

  


 

 

 

 

The Sun and Victor do eventually get married. Their wedding is set on a bed of clouds that casts shade over a field of daisies, on a day that the Sun can afford to hide away in the recluse of Victor’s arms without drowning the world in total darkness as before. 

Victor can’t even remain afloat in the clouds for long; cloud nymphs have to put in the extra effort to keep him from dipping as he takes the Sun’s hands into his own and obnoxiously goes into his five-page long, handwritten vows. It looks kinda weird from where Yuri sits in the small crowd of Star Makers and wind imps and also Victor’s immediate family (which is really just his mom and Makkachin). Victor holds the Sun’s hands tightly yet at the same time treating them as though they are the most precious things in the world that he has ever touched, all the while standing on top of two cloud nymphs that continuously sink and rise in the clouds to keep him aloft. He’s in tears by the end of it; they both are a pair of sniveling messes that kiss each others’ happy tears away before the deacon permits them to kiss as husbands.

 _How do you two love each other so much so quickly?_ Yuri thinks as he watches them glide around on a bed of clouds to a waltz for their first dance, the Star Makers shining their light so it looks as though they are dancing through the stream of a nebulous current.

Maybe the answer is in the way they look at each other. Or the way that they smile at each other, or how they hold one another.

Maybe it’s just in the way how Victor says ‘my solnyshko’, and how Yuri knows Victor will find any way to interject that phrase into daily conversation because it's now his two favorite words. Maybe it’s how the Sun sighs out ‘my Victor’, and he brightens with light like he’s been dying to say those words for the longest of times.

Maybe there’s no complexity to the answer at all.

Maybe it’s simply ‘they just do’.

**Author's Note:**

> originally this was a concept idea for the yoi magic zine, but went through minor tweaking for something else and now is pretty asdfh;aufahdjfalk
> 
> slowly dying in school i dont know when i'll be able to write anything anymore OTL


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